The temple of the Sagrada Familia, by Gaudí, is nowadays one of the most emblematic buildings of Barcelona, and the most visited monument in Spain. Despite the high popularity surrounding the name of the architect, his great work, still unfinished, has divided public opinion in the city for decades and has starred since its inception in a complex and paradoxical cultural phenomenon. My object of study consists of four major novels of modern Spanish narrative (Antagonía [1973-81], by Luis Goytisolo, La ciudad de los prodigios [1986], by Eduardo Mendoza, Campo cerrado [1943], by Max Aub and El amante bilingüe [1990], by Juan Marsé): all of them stand out because of the interartistic dialogue they establish with the famous building, which is referred to more or less extensively in their plots. The study will prove that the textual references to the Sagrada Familia in each particular case contain important interpretive keys that illuminate the discursive characterization of the texts while at the same time opening a new avenue for reading them.

To this end, I start by situating my object of interest within the studies on the literary city, a field where Barcelona has a unique tradition of reflecting on its novel. Then I trace the cultural reception of the Sagrada Familia as evidenced in literary testimonies of the early twentieth century, and continue by documenting the presence of the building in modern, post-Civil War narrative. After that, I explain the conceptual notions and terms on the phenomenon of the intersection between architecture and literature, which will guide the analysis of the texts.

Finally, I carry out the literary analysis of the four aforementioned novels.

The Sagrada Familia, as well as showing itself to be a versatile metafictional emblem at four different times in modern Spanish narrative, illustrates the possibilities of a literary analysis that takes into account the architectural component of the texts in order to illuminate their comprehension and their characterization.

Addressing the pending problem of understanding and interpreting the baroque discourse and multiple symbols in the third part, Realización, of the trilogy Crisol (1984) by Justo S. Alarcón, this study compares the vision of mestizaje, or miscegenation, in the said trilogy part and La Raza Cósmica (1925) by José Vasconcelos. To do this, we examine existing research on the two authors and we particularized the conception of mestizo, taking into account its expression in Mexico and the United States (U.S.). To analyze the text by Alarcón, our critical framework is based on fables and their didactic function as represented by the parables in the Bible and their moral functions as personified in the fables by Aesop and other writers. Although both authors predict the birth of a new race, we found that Vasconcelos, in a Utopian way, claims it would rise in Mexico. This new race, according to Vasconcelos, will be the product of hybridization between four races: white, yellow, red or Native American, and black. Justo S. Alarcón, on the other hand, suggests in Realización that such hybridization will take place in the United States, specifically the Southwest. Using analogies, allegories, and parables, the narrator presents several Aesopian characters that engage in massive and repeated migrations that ultimately produce a new crisol or melting pot. Such new hybridization takes place in the U.S. This study draws attention to the origin of the Chicano and the issue of identity. Future work could focus on both issues

The comparative study of the poetics of landscape of the Argentinian poet Diana Bellessi in Sur (1998) and the U.S. poet Mary Oliver in What Do We Know (2002) reveal how each writer acknowledges discourse and perception as means to bridge the nature/culture dichotomy and to unsettle the American landscape from cultural and epistemological assumptions that perpetuate the disconnection with matter. While Bellessi re–signifies the historical and cultural landscape drawn by European colonization in order to establish a dialogue with the voices of the past related to a present–day quest to reconnect with nature, Oliver articulates an ontological and phenomenological expression to reformulate prevailing notions of cognizing materiality aiming to overcome the culture
ature divide. I therefore examine the interrelationship between perception, language and nature in Bellessi’s and Oliver’s poetic works by deploying Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological theory of perception into material feminist theoretical works by Karen Barad and Susan Hekman. In so doing, I demonstrate how both poets act on language to forge a non–dualistic expression that, in allowing matter as an agentic force that relates with humans in dynamics of mutual impact and intra–activity, entails a phenomenological and onto–epistemological approach to ground language in materiality and produce ethical discursive practices to relate with nature. I argue that Bellessi’s and Oliver’s approach toward nature proves as necessary in the articulation of efforts leading to overcome the nature/culture dichotomy and thus, to address ecological and environmental concerns.